Victoria's Big Housing Build is tipping $5.3bn into social accommodation — not everyone's happy with where it's going

On Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, there's only one crisis accommodation centre — a disused three-star motel on the brink of being redeveloped.

Ben Smith, the head of the Mornington Community Support Centre, admits the 12-room motel is hardly fit-for-purpose for the people who come to stay.

But he says the lack of nearby options means there is a long queue to get in regardless.

"When people get to this point, they've exhausted all other options," Mr Smith said.

"Generally, when we come across people, they're in their cars or on the foreshore."

But it's not a permanent solution. Guests usually stay for four months, and figuring out where they go next is a constant challenge.

Short-term rentals and holiday homes crowd a housing market with few affordable rentals for those in the lowest income brackets.

The local council declared a housing crisis in 2021 and says indicators like homelessness and the social housing waitlist have only deteriorated since then.

About 420 public housing properties — more than a quarter of the area's total social housing stock — are earmarked for maintenance, but it's unclear how many are vacant while upgrades are carried out.

And masking these facts, advocates say, is the region's reputation as a millionaire's playground, which tends to obscure the disadvantage lurking among its postcard-picture views.

Local housing advocate Belinda Rodman said people came to the peninsula for its beautiful wineries, beaches and golf clubs, "but there is this other side".

"We have somewhere between 600 and 1,000 people sleeping rough down here every night," she said.

For these reasons, housing groups celebrated the announcement of the state's landmark social housing fund — the $5.3 billion Big Housing Build — at the end of 2020.

Four years later, just 41 homes have been committed to the Mornington Peninsula region. That's less than half a per cent of the 10,000 homes started or built so far through the fund.

Accusations of funding inequality

The Big Housing Build was billed as the largest-ever investment by a state government in social housing when the government launched its plan for 12,000 new homes in November 2020.

While critics have questioned whether it delivered any public (or government-owned) housing, the government says nearly 5,000 households have moved into new homes as significant funding flowed into the community housing sector and private-public partnerships in the years that followed.

The ABC analysed public-facing data related to allocation of the Big Housing Build so far to create this map showing where in greater Melbourne the money was spent.

It shows well-connected, inner-city areas tended to receive most funding and less was allocated to municipalities further from the city centre.

The exceptions include some middle-ring areas — like Maribyrnong and Glen Eira — that received less funding than some of their neighbours, and the Bayside council area, which received more.

The five most-funded metro municipalities —Port Phillip, Stonnington, Bayside, Melbourne and Moonee Valley — have together received more than a third of the Big Housing Build funding.

Geelong received the most funding, with nearly half a billion dollars — which means these six local government areas have together been allocated just under half of the fund.

The ABC then compared this data with a key indicator of social housing demand: the Victorian Housing Register, or social housing waitlist.

The maps are not like-for-like, because Homes Victoria organises preferred locations into different groupings of suburbs, instead of by local government area. Applicants can also select more than one preferred location.

However, the map does suggest considerable social housing demand exists across Melbourne, reaching into some outer suburban areas that received comparatively little funding.

Mr Smith, who is running as an independent candidate at the upcoming federal election, said what he felt was an inequitable distribution of funding had mystified many on the Mornington Peninsula.

The $14-million investment in the coastal region is close to the $15.5 million that flowed to the high country region of Benalla, which has less than a quarter of its social housing waitlist.

"When we've got the same sort of GDP, same sort of waitlists, same sort of homelessness scenarios [as other areas] but a real lack of significant investment, I think it's worrying," Mr Smith said.

In a statement, the state's social housing agency, Homes Victoria, said its site selection criteria included demand, access to services and links to employment.

"We also consider the availability of land, as well as new development partnership opportunities," a spokesperson said.

In a June report into social housing planning, Victoria's auditor-general questioned Homes Victoria's strategies for meeting social housing demand.

The watchdog found the agency had selected most Big Housing Build sites by the time a model to determine priority areas was finalised in 2023.

Housing uplift lagging in some regions

While regional Victoria was also a major focus of the fund — with a guaranteed 25 per cent funding share — the ABC has also identified four regional areas where no promised homes had been completed, as of November last year.

They are Hindmarsh Shire, Indigo Shire, Hepburn Shire and Golden Plains Shire.

In the Golden Plains Shire west of Melbourne, just $4 million of a promised $15 million has been allocated.

"While council hoped that more of the guaranteed $15 million would have been allocated and spent by this point, we are committed to advocating for the best outcomes for our residents," shire CEO Shane Walden said.

In the Hepburn Shire, meanwhile, community groups are anxious for more social housing to address an awkward juxtaposition in the local housing market.

While up to 2,000 homes in the popular holiday destination are unoccupied each night, about 300 permanent households are at risk of homelessness.

Two years ago, the Homes Victoria website said 18 homes were underway in the shire as part of the Big Housing Build.

Then, that number tracked backwards to four, with the state government suggesting planning hurdles were to blame.

Several housing groups the ABC spoke with acknowledged the planning barriers and potential local opposition to large projects that could make it harder to get developments in smaller areas off the ground.

Mary-Faeth Chenery, a housing advocate who worked to secure those four homes as social housing, said the situation showed how the fund was geared to larger population centres.

"I can understand the need to concentrate the resources of the state," she said.

"But I do think that regional areas and rural areas need some separate approaches that are smaller scale, that will do a good job of providing housing for those in need here."

Demand growing as billions tipped in

Many people on the housing frontline also mentioned how requests for assistance had reached an all-time high as housing affordability deteriorated.

The social housing waitlist has grown over the life of the fund.

The state's social housing stock has also trended upwards, climbing by about 4,400 since the middle of 2020 to 89,500 dwellings in the middle of 2024.

But homelessness advocates point to Victoria's overall proportion of social housing, which trails other jurisdictions, to argue that significant ongoing funding is needed.

"More than a third of Australians who are seeking homelessness support are living in Victoria, and yet we have the smallest proportion of social housing," Deborah Di Natale from peak body Council to Homeless Persons said.

"Is it any wonder we're finding ourselves in the crisis we're in?"

The auditor-general's report found 80 per cent of Big Housing Build homes would be complete by the end of 2026, with the rest finished about two years later.

The state government has also committed $1 billion in funding for social housing across regional and rural Victoria under its Regional Housing Fund.